I am sure I am not the only one who finds room clearing operations in JA quite hard and unnecessarily risky. The major problem is that in order to open a door, you need to face it parallel, which means you are directly under enemy fire if there is actually an enemy behind that door. You cannot open it from the side from a distance, as you could do in real life. (I mean a standard not locked door)

Another problem is that, unlike reality, you cannot peek around a corner or use a periscope type of device to have a quick look to see what is lurking behind that corner. You need to move your merc one step and take a look. Which makes it very likely for your merc to get killed. Similarly, you cannot shoot blindly or toss a grenade sideways around a corner.

I don't know if it is code-wise possible, but it would be great to have these features implemented some day. If these things are technically not possible, then I would be happy to hear your suggestions and tips on efficient room-clearing.

I believe that with your weapon raised, and in certain postures, such as standing with weapon raised, and also when prone, you can hold down alt while clicking on the spot to your left or right and you will continue to keep your weapon raised to the North(say if it was so when raised), sidestep (or roll if prone), and at least in the original JA2 (pre v1.13 series), you would be much harder to hit or let's say, less likely to trigger an enemy interrupt.

For some strange reason, this does not seem to work when in the Crouched Position, even with the weapon raised (L to look in a new direction, hit L again to aim down sights -- aka raised weapon). Instead you will crouch-walk backwards and so you turn to look at your original tile.

Now, I could have sworn that in earlier v1.13 versions you could do this while crouched as well, but it does not work for me anymore.

I see this ALT side-step movement with a weapon raised in either Standing or prone position (you supposedly actually roll when prone to the side with aim to the same cardinal direction as originally) as , in effect, incorporating a sort of lean around corner advantage.

Now, I know this tends to work well in Easy Difficulty even a customized one that is really Experienced, but I cannot promise it will protect you at higher difficulties. However, it is still advantageous because you are looking at the direction of any enemy first, so you tend to see the enemy and have a good chance to benefit from that to either interrupt first or avoid interrupts (plus your weapon is ready to fire in that intended vulnerable direction).

Negatives are, side-stepping takes more AP. You need to practice to make it work and use the right stances with the weapon's raised. Not sure if it works on all weapon types. And it overall seems unreliable in effecting that correct side-stepping, but probably because I tend to forget the particular requirements. If you do use it, I'd suggest saving just before you try it in that battle, so that you can try various methods until you prove and learn the correct method. Lastly, it may even depend somewhat on not holding ALT key down too long or not, not sure, probably not, but like I said it feels unreliable (but I think it is mostly because I tried it while crouching).

Why this is not allowed while crouch side-stepping is a big question? I'd like to see it instituted as the default ALT crouch click to the side, while ALT crouch walking backwards defaults to backwards movement.

Why this is not allowed while crouch side-stepping is a big question? I'd like to see it instituted as the default ALT crouch click to the side, while ALT crouch walking backwards defaults to backwards movement.

Opening doors from the side should be doable and would be a welcome option in addition to unlocking a door without opening it. It may look a little strange when we open a door from the wrong side but I think that's just a minor issue.

In the vanilla game, i used to position 6 mercs outside a door in an X formation, 2 of them aiming straight ahead and 2 on each side aiming diagonally inside the room, I used Shadow to open the door , since he was usually my highest lvl merc and therefore harder to be interrupted, although it did happen a few times. So, as soon as he opened the door , 5 of them would shoot if they got interrupts (the long warehouse in Grumm being the best example), Shadow would shoot only once, conserving ap's to close the door once everyone was done shooting inside the building. Next round repeat the process and maybe even throw a smoke grenade inside to cover your movements in the next turn or real time sneaking.

Opening doors from the side should be doable and would be a welcome option in addition to unlocking a door without opening it. It may look a little strange when we open a door from the wrong side but I think that's just a minor issue.

Now THAT would be a very cool addition for quality of life in the game, if most think it does not change the balancing in the game.

One other thing I noticed that might be related to this issue and fix though. In the large sweatshop where all the kids work to create Doreen's shirts, the pathing thru large metal double wide doors, only allows you to cross directly across to the adjacent tile to the current door tile you are in. You cannot traverse an open double doorway by moving thru it diagonally.

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTION FOR CONSIDERATION: THE ABILITY TO LOCK DOORS. Perhaps only if you have the key for it, perhaps even if not. Only if the door lock has never been "destroyed" by shotgun lock-buster ammo, kicking, explosives, etc.

The negative to the ability to lock doors are :

1) could perhaps be scammed for experience (could just not allow that)
2) the AI might have to be adapted to be able to deal with such locked doors

It might be best to consider it some sort of fortification and then let the AI be able to deal with it via damaging the door lock or door, as required.

Interesting, I don't know. I have not seen them stopped either, but I presumed it was because I had not seen them try a locked door. Well, if they aren't stopped by locked doors, then probably the feature is not designed to be so.

By that I mean, I had in my mind, justified a possible locking of doors to prevent enemy access for a time. Otherwise it would only be a way, if allowed, to increase lockpicking skills by creating more locked doors to unlock. But if enemies were designed with built in auto-lockpicking status, then I can't see the non-scam reason for its justification. So if you are right, I guess that suggestion to allow locking of doors should be nixed.